Wendy Williams
| died= | hometown= Ocean Township, New Jersey | knownfor= Television & radio broadcaster | season= Dancing with the Stars 12 | partner= Tony Dovolani | place= 10th | highestscore= 17 (Quickstep) | lowestscore= 14 (Cha-Cha-Cha) | averagescore= 15.3 }} Wendy Joan Williams-Hunter (born: Wendy Joan Williams) is a celebrity from Season 12 of Dancing with the Stars. Early Life Williams was born 18 July 1964, in Ocean Township, Monmouth County, New Jersey, a suburb of Asbury Park. She is the second of three children born to parents Thomas and Shirley Williams, She grew up in the Wayside section of Ocean Township. Williams graduated from Ocean Township High School, and from 1982 to 1986, she attended Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, where she graduated with a B.A. in communications and was a DJ for the college radio station WRBB. Radio Career Williams began her career working for WVIS in the United States Virgin Islands. In 1989, Williams began at urban contemporary WRKS (now WEPN-FM) in New York City as a substitute disc jockey. WRKS hired her full-time for its morning show. A year later, Williams moved to an afternoon drive-time shift, eventually winning the Billboard Award for "Best On-Air Radio Personality" in 1993. In December 1994, Emmis Broadcasting purchased WRKS and switched Williams to the company's other New York property, hip-hop formatted WQHT ("Hot 97"), as WRKS was reformatted into an urban adult contemporary outlet. She was fired from Hot 97 in 1998. Williams was hired by a Philadelphia urban station, WUSL ("Power 99FM"). Her husband, Kevin Hunter, became her agent. She was very open about her personal life on air, discussing her miscarriages, breast enhancement surgery, and former drug addiction, and helped the station move from 14th place in the ratings to 2nd. In 2001, Williams returned to the New York airwaves when WBLS hired her full-time for a syndicated 2–6 p.m. time slot. Williams' friend, MC Spice of Boston, offered his voiceover services to the show, often adding short rap verses tailored specifically for Williams' show. The New York Times stated that her "show works best when its elements – confessional paired with snarkiness – are conflated," and cited a 2003 interview with Whitney Houston as an example. During the highly publicized interview that "went haywire" and included "a lot of bleeped language", Williams "asked Houston, insistently, about her drug and spending habits". By 2008, she was syndicated in Redondo Beach, California; Shreveport, Louisiana; Wilmington, Delaware; Toledo, Ohio; Columbia, South Carolina; Emporia, Virginia; Lake Charles, Louisiana; Tyler, Texas; and Alexandria, Louisiana, among other markets. Williams left her radio show in 2009 to focus on her television program and spend more time with her family. She was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame. Lawsuit In 2008, Nicole Spence, talent booker for The Wendy Williams Experience, filed papers with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission suing Williams. Spence claimed Williams' husband, Kevin Hunter, demanded sex from Spence on many occasions and created a hostile work environment by threatening and assaulting his wife on company premises. On 11 June 2008, Spence filed a sexual-harassment lawsuit against Williams, Hunter, and Inner City Broadcasting Corporation in federal court in Manhattan. Both Williams and Hunter deny the charges. Television Career The Wendy Williams Show In 2008, Debmar-Mercury offered Williams do to a six-week television trial of her own talk show. On 14 July 2008, Williams debuted her daytime talk show, The Wendy Williams Show, in four cities during the summer of 2008. During the tryout, The New York Times hailed the show as "breakthrough in daytime". After a successful run, Fox signed a deal with Debmar-Mercury to broadcast the show nationally on their stations beginning in July 2009. In addition, BET picked up cable rights to broadcast the show at night. In 2010, BET started airing the show internationally in 54 countries through BET International. Williams has received multiple nominations at the Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Entertainment Talk Show Host and the show itself was for Outstanding Talk Show/Entertainment.18 The show attracts 2.4 million daily viewers on average, with Williams trading off daily with Ellen DeGeneres as the number one female host on daytime television. During the November 2015 sweeps period, the talk show finished either No. 1 or 2 in the key demo of women 25-54 in 55% of the U.S. and 20 of the top-25 markets. Other Appearances Williams has made appearances in the television series Martin (1992) and in the soap opera One Life to Live (2011). Williams filled in for Jodi Applegate in WNYW's morning television show, Good Day New York (2007), and hosted a game show for GSN called Love Triangle (2011) for which she and her husband Kevin Hunter served as executive producers. Williams played a judge in the Lifetime network show Drop Dead Diva (2011) and served as a guest judge on The Face (2013). In February 2013, it was announced that Williams and her husband and manager, Kevin, were launching a reality television production company, Wendy Williams Productions. that would produce unscripted content, including reality television and game shows. Williams was an executive producer for the show Celebrities Undercover (2014). Williams also executive produced the Lifetime biopic Aaliyah: The Princess of R&B, which premiered 15 November 2014. In September 2015, documentary series entitled Death by Gossip with Wendy Williams premiered on the Investigation Discovery channel, both hosted and produced by Williams. Film Career Williams appeared in the film adaptation of Steve Harvey's book, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, titled Think Like a Man (2012) and its sequel, Think Like a Man Too (2014). In 2012, it was announced Williams would enter into a "production alliance" with producers Suzanne de Passe and Madison Jones to create movies and television shows aimed at multicultural audiences. These projects would appear under the heading "Wendy Williams presents" and their first project would be VH1 adaptation of a Star Jones novel. Personal Life In her biography, Wendy's Got the Heat, she used the pseudonym, Robert Morris III to refer to her first husband and describes him as a salesperson. She and her first husband have since divorced. On 30 November 1997, Wendy married her second husband, Kevin Hunter. She gave birth to their son, Kevin Hunter Jr. 18 August 2000. Dancing with the Stars 12 She was a contestant, paired with pro Tony Dovolani in Season 12 of Dancing with the Stars (2011); she was eliminated second. Scores Gallery Wendy_&_Tony_S12.jpg WendyWilliams-Promo12.jpg Category:Females Category:Contestants Category:Season 12 contestants Category:Actors